Neck of the woods Saudi media editors and owners, all freedom lovers, are deeply worried that “Iraq press freedom is threatened”. Saudi media freedom itself, however, is not threatened for two reasons: (1) There is no Saudi press freedom to be threatened. You have no press freedom, ergo: you don’t have to worry about a press freedom that does not exist, and, (2) Saudi media are all owned and/or operated by the princes and their kin, from Asharq Alawsat (Crown Prince for the Next Few Months Salman) and al-Hayat (Prince Khaled Bin sultan) to Alarabiya to Al-Arab Network (Prince Al-Waleeed) all the way down to the local newspapers. We know nobody would restrict the freedom of princely press because princes are fierce defenders of press freedom and will not stand for it. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods “JEDDAH: An expert ruled out the occurrence of devastating earthquakes in Saudi Arabia over the next 100 years. “Seismic activity underneath Saudi Arabia will remain normal and if any disturbances do occur over the next 100 years, they will not pose any danger as their magnitude will never exceed 4.5 on the Richter Scale,” said Ali Al-Shukri, head of the Astronomical Sciences Department at King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals. The latest tremor registering a magnitude of 4.5 near the Kingdom occurred at an undersea location 181 km off Farasan Island in the Red Sea on Sept. 2.
Satellite images showed that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate were moving away from each other, stretching the Earth’s crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea……………”
Odd, but it almost never quakes in the Arabian Peninsula. It falls just outside the “Seismic Hazard Zone”, although the tip of the UAE is the only exposed part of as an extension of the active Iranian zone (speaking geological, not political). Surrounding regions, like Iran and Turkey get hit frequently and hard, but the Peninsula (and East Africa) is not affected.
This I couldn’t resist: I suspect they are setting the ground for skyscrapers in Mecca and Madinah. And maybe in Jeddah, of course. Manhattan in Hijaz is a possibility, and the potentates are probably salivating at how many pious pilgrims they can squeeze in every year. They have already razed all the historic monuments of Mecca, like the homes of the Prophet and the Sahaba they claim to love and venerate, and replaced them with lucrative hotels, five-six-seven star hotels and shopping malls. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Remember the Saudi plan of last year to have Morocco and Jordan join the Gulf GCC? So what happened to that Saudi plan? Are they working hard in Riyadh on modalities for Jordanian and Moroccan membership? Does the complete silence on this issue relate to the fact that Morocco is now more of a constitutional monarchy that it was last year? Is it related to the fact that the Star Trek king of Jordan is being pressured to allow freer elections? But that is exactly what the Bahraini opposition is demanding: to have a constitutional regime like Morocco. Yet the whole GCC establishment and the Wahhabi-tribal-liberals rose against the Bahraini people and their demand. That is what some of the Gulf tribal-Islamist opposition claim to be seeking, but selectively: they strongly oppose a constitutional monarchy for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They must think the al-Saud princes and al-Khalifa kleptocrats are fonts of wisdom that can’t be replicated through any election. As for Qatar and the UAE and Oman, they claim that they already have the most unelected unrepresentative democracy that money can buy (actually can’t buy in the case of Oman). The al-Saud princes are slightly different: they have the least democratic and least representative and least free system that oil money has a hard time buying. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
“Religion is the last refuge of these scoundrels……..” Paraphrased by Me
“Brigadier-General Manaf Tlas hails from a family with a long history in the Syrian military establishment starting from his father former Syrian Defense Minister Lieutenant General Mustafa Tlas to his cousins who defected from the Syrian regime. Tlas’s defection dealt a severe blow to the Syrian regime not only because he is the son of a former defense minister, but also because of his own rank in the army. Tlas comes from Rastan in the Homs governorate. Homs was, in fact, the main reason for the fallout between Manaf Tlas and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Tlas asked Assad to stop military operations in Homs, which at the time, had claimed the lives of hundreds of Syrians. Manaf Tlas, commander of the Republican Guard’s 105th brigade, is the second son of Mustafa Tlas, who was minister of defense from 1972 during the reign of Hafez al-Assad, to 2004, four years after Bashar al-Assad inherited power following his father’s death. Bashar al-Assad dismissed Mustafa Tlas, who he saw as a member of the “old guard,” one year before the assassination of his friend former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri…………….”
This is too cute, from the semi-official Saudi royal mouthpiece Alarabiya. They even add a bit of fantasy hint about how his father Mustafa Tlass was retired in order for ‘someone’ to be able to kill Hariri. Oh, yeah: Tlass was the protector of Hariri the al-Saud man in Lebanon. Suddenly the whole Tlass family, partners in the looting and repression of Syria for many decades, are presented as saviors of Syria. Saviors of Syria from their own past. Suddenly Manaf Tlass makes the obligatory Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, a symbolic political gesture in this case devoid of religion. This Umrah was like a political campaign gesture in the West. It was a political gesture meant to satisfy the al-Saud, their Wahhabi shaikhs, and the Muslim Brotherhood-Salafi forces that control the opposition movement inside Syria. This Umrah also indicates that the al-Saud princes now own Manaf Tlass: lock, stock, and barrel. He is their prize possession that will help rule Syria the way the al-Saud want it to be ruled. Maybe the way the Western powers want it to be ruled. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods
“Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday that Syria will soon be at peace as the army is gradually suppressing the armed insurgent groups. “Enemies imagined that they could create a vacuum in the management of the country by triggering explosions in Damascus but the enemies of the Syrian nation have been defeated… and the army is gradually gaining supremacy over the armed opposition,” Salehi told reporters after a cabinet meeting. The foreign minister said the opposition can be divided into two groups. The first seeks reforms and its demands should be met by the Syrian government. The second, with the support of the West and certain regional countries, has resorted to violence and seeks the dissolution of the government through civil war……….”
For some reason I don’t believe that Ali Akbar Salehi is right. Something tells me he is wrong about how things will get peaceful in Syria so soon. My imaginary and real sources tell me it is going to get hotter in Syria before it cools down. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods
“Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak called on Wednesday for major powers to speed up efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program, cautioning it would be tougher to confront it once Tehran managed to cross an atomic threshold. Israeli media interpreted Barak’s comments as pushing for a possible Israeli strike against Iran to stop a project the West sees as a drive to achieve nuclear weapons though Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying its program is intended solely for peaceful purposes……….”
A couple of years ago I read somewhere that a younger and lighter Ehud Barak was once disguised as a woman during a surprise attack on some PLO leaders in Beirut (he was part of a covert attack team in the 1970s). Ever since then, I have always thought of him as ‘the man in drag’. Nothing wrong with dressing as anything, of course, in certain situations. I think with this new/old statement he was just adding to the built-up air of war-normalcy that the Israelis and the American right-wing are creating in our region. The goal: to make the war of aggression, if and when it comes, like a normal expected and unavoidable thing. Ehud Barak can never outdo Netanyahu who has been screaming “wolf” at the top of his voice for several years now. May they both continue whistling (or making other rude noises) in the wind, or as we call it “fi souq el-sofafeer: making a rude noise in the (noisy) copper-mongers market”. As we say back home. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods “Turkey has announced that it will take additional measures against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Syria, after news broke that the PKK’s offshoot in there has seized control of a number of villages along the Syria-Turkey border. Top civilian and military officials held a security summit yesterday to discuss developments inside Syria and along the border. …………”
In this case will Syria reciprocate and take action against the FSA (Free Syrian Salafi Army) and its supply lines in Turkey? Logic would say: hell yeah. Reality would say: not so fast. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods
“On the European side, vague anxiety was succeeded by real fear. Despite all the changes, the idea of treating Algerians as equals was intolerable, to be avoided at all costs……… In Sétif the trouble started when police tried to seize the PPA flag, now the Algerian flag, and banners calling for the release of Messali Hadj and Algerian independence. It spread to the surrounding countryside, where tribes rose up. In Guelma the events were triggered by arrests and the actions of the militia, which provoked tribes to take revenge on local settlers. The European civilians and the police responded with mass executions and reprisals against entire communities. To remove all traces of their crimes and prevent investigations, they opened mass graves and burned the bodies in the lime kilns at Heliopolis. The army’s actions caused a military historian, Jean-Charles Jauffret, to say that its conduct “resembled a European wartime operation rather than a traditional colonial war” (4). In the Bougie region about 15,000 women and children were forced to kneel before a military parade. The final toll is speculative, as the French government closed the commission of inquiry directed by General Tubert and thekillers were never tried………….”
The Pieds noirs, the European colonists, not only wanted to keep the myth that Algeria was French and that Algerians were “French. They also did not want the Muslim Algerians to have equal political rights. Messali Hadj later formed a movement against the FLN and was demonized by Arab nationalists (he died in exile in France). Ferhat Abbas went on to become first president of the Interim Algerian Government in exile after the FLN started its revolt in 1954. He was replaced later. After independence in 1962 Ahmed Ben Bella came out of a French prison to became president. He was overthrown in 1965 by a coup plotted by Boumedienne and Bouteflika (the current president) and others.
Later on, Ben Bella, after he was released from his ‘Algerian” prison, visited Hadj’s grave. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods “Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has said that if an extraordinary summit of Muslim leaders is supposed to be held in Mecca, the crisis in Bahrain should be top of the agenda. Mehmanparast made the remarks during his regular press briefing in Tehran on Tuesday in response to a question about the fact that Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Sunday that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had called for an emergency Islamic summit in Mecca on August 14 and 15 to address risks of “sedition” threatening Muslim countries. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman stated, “We will welcome any meeting that brings together Muslim countries and will actively participate in it. But the crises are obvious, and it is also clear which countries are taking interventionist measures. If such a meeting is supposed to be held, resolving Bahrain’s crisis” should be top of the agenda…………”
If the summit covers the Syrian civil war, then the Iranians are right in requesting that it should also cover the uprising in Bahrain. I wholeheartedly agree with that. It seems only fair: one Arab uprising is equal to another Arab uprising. By “risks of ‘sedition’ threatening Muslim countries”, I take it the Saudis mean the Arab uprisings and their aftermath. They cannot mean the Western and Israeli military threats against another Muslin country, the threats of another war in our region since they are very likely pushing that (Wikileaks and ‘cutting the head of the snake’ and all that). I suspect the Saudi princes calculate that they have more friends among leaders of Muslim countries than the Iranian mullahs have (they have more money and influential Western friends). They may calculate that they can get a more favorable response. It is also possible the Saudi princes decided to call this meeting to show that they are still active, in spite of the death of two crown princes and the ailing king Abdullah. Except the King looks near the end of his life, literally, his new crown prince is rumored to be a little slow upstairs, and the foreign minister is ailing. They need to inject new blood (al-Saud blood of course) into their regime quickly, not an easy job. How about recruiting Shaikh Nimr al-Nimr in the cabinet? Cheers
Neck of the woods “I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line……” Wichita Lineman (James Taylor)
The Yemeni Deputy Minister of Culture for Manuscripts and Books has announced that a hair of the Prophet Mohammed has been found at a religious school in Zubaida. The vice minister said that the hair had been described in a historical document found early this month (July) which had mentioned a hair of the Prophet in Yemen more than one hundred years ago………..
This business of the hair of the Prophet is no doubt a hoax and the hair is a fake. Otherwise how the hell would a hair, one hair, of the Prophet reach Yemen, hundreds of miles away from where he hung around in Hijaz? I recall some violent riots in Pakistan years ago about another hair of the Prophet Mohammed that was supposedly stolen…. “In December 1963 a sacred relic, allegedly a hair of the Prophet Mohammed, who was the founder of Islam, was reported stolen from the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar. This alleged theft resulted in numerous demonstrations and riots by Muslims in Kashmir, Pakistan, and India…..” This last one is even more ridiculous, since there is no way the Prophet could have ever gotten to India. They can always do a DNA test, but that requires access to the tomb of the Prophet in Madinah, a highly unlikely thing. Back to the USA: I hear that some Republicans have found a hair of Ronald Reagan in American Samoa, inside some Methodist church. My unreliable source also just informed me that they may also have found a hair of Calamity Jane (Canary) in Wichita, Kansas. There is a dispute over that one: someone claimed it was in fact a hair of Buffalo Bill Cody. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..
